What's This? I Miss Boston?????

It's so wierd, but I miss the States. I especially miss Boston. I'm very happy to be home again, but once you've lived in more than one place, your heart is always torn between all these places. At least, that has been my experience. When I see images of the States, or, on the rare occasion, of Boston I feel this rush of nostalgia; okay maybe more like a steady trickle.

When I first got to the States, I found many Bostonians to be brusque. This was a rude shock to me, being used to the chatty English and all. There was a somewhat, in my book, "crass commercialism" to America. If you could pay for it, it could be done. Money ruled. This was very different from "genteel England." In time, though, I came to appreciate this briskness of pace and the can-do attitude which prevails in many places of business in the States. England, by comparison, started to feel very old-fashioned and provincial. I also had GREAT difficulty getting used to the weather extremes- the summers where much hotter and longer than any English summer that I had experienced and so I loved them, the winters were hell on earth for me!

Now, that I'm back home in Lagos, what I mostly miss from the States are my creature comforts, which I think I will get used to doing without over time. I also miss friends and places I used to spend a lot of time: Boston Common and the Boston Public Gardens; downtown Boston, with all the stores and restaurants and museums; the cinemas (though we do have a very fine one in Lagos at the Silverbird Galleria); the Malls (several of them); Dorchester where I volunteered (at PREP, the technology center) and visited many dear friends; my church and church family at the Cambridge Vineyard (discovered sadly just a few months before I left Boston). I miss walking and being able to leave my apartment without any particular destination in mind.

Boston was a much tougher place for me to survive than England. I had almost no family when I got there and was not in the familiar school environment, so it was a lot harder to make friends. I think I mostly cherish my time in Boston, because it's where I can truly say that I became an adult (corny as that might sound, but very true). The tough times showed me truly who I was and could be.